8/4/13

In my other job, I am blessed to have such sweet clients, that not only tip me well, but also leave little food gifts. It's nice to have foodies as clients.
I know that making jam and jellies is work, a food art I have yet to delve into.
With all the summer produce around making my own spicy bread & butter pickles is something
I would love to try my hand at.
Recently one of my clients gave me some homemade peach jam.
Is there anything better than fresh peach or apricot jam? Sure, it's raspberry or blueberry. Ha.
Wanting to use this peach jam on a fresh croissant or toasted english muffin, I opted for using it in cookie form.
A nice slightly salty buttery cookie base filled with a dollop of peach jam.
Mmm. Heavenly.
So this is a "take" on the butter tart on a tad more salty--the yearning for sweet & salty never goes far away from my creativity.
These are good, easy to make too since there is no rolling of the cookie dough, cutting out shapes, etc..
Be warned though, they are very addictive because they are so small and bite-size.
I think homemade apricot jam would be so good in these!
Oh and maybe beach plum jelly?
If the dough gets too soft after placing in tins, put it back in the fridge for a few minutes to firm up
before baking.

Cook Notes:I used
mini muffin tins and got about 42-48 cookies.If you don’t want to do muffin tins then you could do them as flat
cookies making sure to make indentations in the middle of the raw cookie to
place the jam.

Keep in mind you want to keep the dough fairly cold. So if
after placing dough into tins, you might want to pop it back in the fridge to
firm up again; We want these to bake up fairly crisp around the edges.

In a medium bowl, mix the flour, baking powder and
salt.

In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter, cream cheese,
sugar, and vanilla together until well mixed. Add in half the dry mixture to the wet and
mix, then add in the other half and mix again until all combined.Put dough in plastic wrap, cover up well and let sit in
fridge at least 6 hours or overnight. I
kept mine in for 3 days and it was fine.

Using a mini muffin tin, spray with non-stick cooking spray.Then scoop out a dough ball about 2 inches
thick/round, press into muffin tin, making sure to get the edges good.Then using your thumb, gently make a well in
the middle to place a dollup of jam.Make sure you don’t leave any open spaces at the bottom or jam will leak
out.

Using a small spoon, fill the centers with about a teaspoon
or of jam.

Try not to overfill with jam.

If y our kitchen runs hot or it’s the middle of summer, pop
these back in the fridge for a few minutes to chill up.We want these to bake up fairly crisp around
the edges.

Bake 18-23 minutes or until the edges are golden brown.

I let these cool (about 2 hours) in the muffin tins until
they set up enough to be removed.

They will be very soft when they come out of the oven, so
don’t try and remove them.

15 comments:

Making the dough you made for these is harder than canning jam! Seriously. Fruit, sugar, boil it for an hour at a simmer, give or take. Add pectin if you want.

Pour it in glass jars, boil those for 8 to 10 mins, give or take. You've canned. Seriously I thought it was so hard til I tried about 2 yrs ago, hearing all these horror stories and reading things that just over-complicate the act of boiling fruit + sugar. You totally should can anything you want! And if you're going to eat it within 3-6 mos or so, just put it in freezer safe containers and you don't even have to 'can' it in boiling water/jars!

You really need to try to make the bread and butter pickles. I just did 12 jars of gorgeous pickles with cucmber and onions together. These pickles are easy and delicious and no fancy equipment is needed! You will be so happy you made them. Pickling is addictive!

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Unique eats, creative recipes, as simple as possible.What drives me to create? Seeing dishes in restaurants, meals created on TV, recipes in cookbooks/online, and I always think to myself why didn’t they add this or why did they leave out that? Love to question, love to research, and love to learn about combining different flavors and textures in recipes.Recipe creations please email: vanillasugarblog@aol.com